album reviews
Album review: Craig Fortnam – ‘Ark’: North Sea Radio man gathers his world in a prog-pastoral-folk craft of intricacy and thoughtfulness
ARCH GARRISON, whose lovely odyssey of modern Wessex psych-pastoralism The Bitter Lay we loved for all its exploration of thorny byways last year; a half-dozen or so long-playing outings in the North Sea Radio Orchestra; even back before the century’s turn, a solitary album with Shrubbies. In all these incarnations we’ve enjoyed and explored the …
Album review: Fuzzy Lights – ‘Burials’: Cambridge psych-folk prodigals grow a faerie ring of psych-folk, post-rock and more to lay your troubled bones within
IT’S BEEN all of eight years now since Cambridgeshire post-folk collective Fuzzy Lights have graced our ears with an album, that being Rule Of Twelfths; but the planets have aligned favourably for such a sonic missive and, scrying the near future, their fourth album of atmospheric acid-folk, Burials, will be handed down to us come …
Album review: Sebastian Plano – ‘Save Me Not’: a portal to a more ecstatic, more ethereal sonic safe space
ARGENTINIAN composer, cellist, and producer Sebastian Plano is set to release his sixth album and his second for one of the blue-chip labels of modern composition, Mercury KX, this Friday; it’s entitled Save Me Not and it’s an incredibly pretty place of aural safety. His most recent album for the label, 2019’s Verve, was (and …
Album Review: Rich Ragany and the Digressions – Beyond Nostalgia and Heartache
Why is Rich Ragany not consistently selling-out theatres and gracing the covers of the likes of Mojo and The Wire? That’s a question that repeatedly came to mind during the first couple of listens through new album Beyond Nostalgia and Heartache. So, for the uninitiated, first – some history; ‘Rags’, Canadian-born but now firmly London-based, …
Album review: The Catenary Wires – ‘Birling Gap’: Amelia and Rob take a look at how we’re doing as an island in folk-rock and fuzzpop
AMELIA FLETCHER and Rob Pursey have been making intelligent British indiepop together through more incarnations than your current, faithful scribe cares to shake a stick at, and thus that stick shall remain firmly static. Their relationship goes right back to the days of the lovely Talulah Gosh, one of many bands tarred only partly accurately …
Album: Rise Against – Nowhere Generation
Punk rock band Rise Against new album,Nowhere Generation, is the bands first new studio effort in four years. is set for a June 4 release and is Rise Against’s first with new label Loma Vista Recordings. Regarding the album front man Said McIlrath comments: “Today there is the promise of the American Dream, and then …
Album review: José Mauro – ‘A Viagem Das Horas’: another unearthed Brazilian gem from Far Out Recordings
LOST albums create a mystique stoked by rumour, fandom and hype, waiting for the moment to surface and often for the bubble of expectation to burst. But some records emerge from the past almost unannounced, previously known to the very few and for the rest of us waiting to be found before we knew that …
Album review: Mdou Moctar – ‘Afrique Victime’: a coming together of the West African and western rock
MDOU MOCTAR is at last gathering momentum; but it’s been an epic journey since 2008, when his raw emotional guitar music first began to spread across West Africa via the DIY network of traded SIM cards. Picked up by Chris Kirkley of Sahel Sounds, who sent Mdou a much-needed left-handed Strat, then released his first …
Album review: Yoo Doo Right – ‘Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose’: fiendishly enthralling and focused
BEGINNING in 2016, Montréal’s Yoo Doo Right have strewn the experimental music world lavishly with fervent, heavenly jams: heavily akin to their eponymous krautrock forefathers, also stirring in a heady mix of influences and inspirations. The trio – Justin Cober (guitar, synthesizers, vocals), Charles Masson (bass), and John Talbot (drums, percussion) – made their debut …
EP review: James Heather – ‘Modulations: EP2’: the journey through grief articulated with beauty for solo piano
CONTEMPORARY composer James Heather is set to release his first collection of original works in four years in the shape of Modulations: EP2, which will be out on Coldcut’s other label besides Ninja Tune, Ahead Of Our Time, come May 28th. Recorded in his homebuilt studio during lockdown, each track on Modulations: EP2 was performed in a single …